The Last Crusade
by phantomwriter05
Summary: A young Jedi Knight enters a sacred temple in the heart of the unknown seeking a treasure to rescue a Princess. There, within a burial chamber he comes across an Empress's tomb and a tormented Wraith that defends it. All the while unaware of the secrets they hold. One-Shot. Post-TLJ.


_This story was written to several pieces of musical score. If you want to listen to them in tandem with the pros, the track will appear in ( ) that will tell you when to start it. If not then enjoy it the way you want too._

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 **The Last Crusade**

The young hero entered a temple that had been overgrown in many years of abandonment of all knowledge. He was dressed in an aged and well-worn Resistance jacket. It was an old and obscure symbol to the galaxy that many no longer remembered. A wish upon a shooting star that was fleeting, long, long ago. And he wore a part of a navigation chart on a necklace that he had always worn since he could remember, he wasn't sure why, but he always felt that it was important. He stepped through overgrowth and around the skeletal remains of a dozen black clad figures that wore the dread helms of the "Knights of Ren". Around them lay many discarded weapons and tools meant to break and pry stone.

Sensing the danger, the young hero from his utility belt drew an old Lightsaber given to him by an old blind man who had raised him. He said he was a Stormtrooper once, that he was a hero that helped save the galaxy. No one had ever believed him. Even the young man was never sure if he ever believed him either, but they were good stories none the less. But now his tales of Scavengers, Princesses, and Dark Lords seemed to echo with truth since his uncle placed the old Lightsaber in his hand, killed in battle with a Sith Witch that had imprisoned a Princess within the dungeons of her own palace by the sea. Where the old man had gotten the Lightsaber the boy didn't know, always being told that it was a story for another day … when the youth was old enough to understand. He still didn't, but he knew that he had to avenge his uncle and rescue the Princess that the evil witch and a bastard prince had kidnapped. They wished to force marriage upon the shimmering jewel that was the regal girl, to add to their power this beautiful and perfect product of "the union of Dark and Light". She would be the prince's queen, and the witch's to breed and control the powerful bloodline she was the last of.

As the young man moved forward he sensed something was coming. Following the trail of decayed dead bodies, the youth noticed that they all had been struck down by a Lightsaber. Their burn patterns say that it was a powerful weapon that was unruly and jagged. All of the dead Knights of Ren were bottle necked around a chamber door in the old temple. He knew through the bending and folding of the force in the far chamber, that whatever killed them was still here, still guarding what lies beyond. There was a sinking, a great hole of darkness, silent and cold which drew all living energy into this pit of despair. An abyss that lingered within this royal burial chamber that was as ruined as the dark force presence that haunted it like a phantom shadow within the sacred halls of long, long ago.

 _(Guide My Sword – Mark Knopfler)_

Old stone crackled under old Rebel star pilot boots as he entered a large domed chamber. It was stripped bare as great tree branches broke through the stain glass sanctuary and pushed through the gilded dome roof, hanging vines and ivy from the ceiling by full branches, the mural designs and images above lost forever in the thick vegetation that now covered it. The pale sunlight of planetary winter gave strange color patterns on the cracked tile and ivy wrapped columns where fluttering tree branches created projected illusions from stain glass reflections.

But all the young man's attention was drawn to the very center of the chamber.

Fore there was no altar, no symbol of religiosity, nor anything else in the room. All that was and remained in this grand palace of mourning and sorrow lay an ornate and queenly tomb of stone. Vine, ivy, branch, and leaves crawled and claimed the chamber. But for the tomb, it was as pristine and well-kept as if it had just been set. The opaque marble slab was carved in the likeness of the one that lay there, forever in sleep. She was the vision of young beauty, regal and saintly. Her stone tresses were splayed under head, a great crown lay upon her brow, and a flowing gown made her seem purely ethereal. The very air was ripe with a strange type of magic that he couldn't quite place. Something warm, loving, and filled with light exuded from the crypt. A multi-colored reflection of sun's rays ever shined in a divine shower unmatched upon her. The brilliance of sunlight was blinding on the carved likeness of this Princess, this Queen, and this Goddess with the face of love. There was something venerable, sacred, of this strange place, and with an honorable reverence did the youth step forward and approach the sacred tomb.

His hand brushed her stone cheek gently, almost fondly as if it were the supple milky cheek of a girl still alive. He looked over her, his hand trailing down her marble body, his eyes never leaving her face. For just a moment he was so sure that he had known her. That he had known her smile, her laughter, her love. For just a split second, he reached out to her in the great connection of ether where her energy within the binding of the universe had left its lasting mark. And within it was a face, a beautiful suffering, an angelic sorrow of pain and longing. All of these intimate and quiet emotions lingered not within the force, not within the universe, but deep within him, deep within a Princess he was on a crusade to save. Both of them, tied indelibly to this young woman's suffering of longing and joyous bliss of love for a figure of darkness that remained unattainable to her, even upon her dying breath in his arms.

The scrutinizing frown of the youth's brow came when, slowly, his wandering hand stopped where her hands lay clasped in stone. He looked down and saw that within her grasp was a carving of a lightsaber. Even in raiment of an Empress, clean, pure, and beautiful, this woman was given a warrior's honor within her burial. But the youth held on his thoughts as he stared unwaveringly upon the weapon in her hand. Slowly, he lifted his own Lightsaber, the ancient blade that his blind uncle had given to him in his dying breath after failing to rescue the Princess. The carved likeness in her hand and the blade within his were one in the same. Then he came to realize that in his grasp was the ethereal queen's own lightsaber, her own sword. Ever had he been drawn to it as a child, just like he had been drawn to her when he first saw her crypt. But, now, everything made more, as it ever made increasingly less, sense. He was flooded with an infant child's patch work memory, fragments preserved within the Force of places and people who he had thought were just figments of dreams.

Suddenly the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

He had moved evasively before he ever gave it a second thought. Heat and spark prickled his hair and singed his jacket as he ducked out the way. With a snarl, a chaotic fiery blade of crimson sliced through the magic filled air where the young man had stood. Taking a defensive swordsman's stance, the young man faced his foe without fear in the sudden ambush. He looked darkly at this new adversary that was as old and tied to this place as the tomb that sat in its very core.

"Stay away … don't touch her!"

The scratched and damaged chrome and black helmet had no voice changer anymore, and the measured and angry sound of a very human and flawed man was muffled in its place. It was a tall and statuesque figure, clad in black robes that were worn down to threadbare. The long vigil, the unwavering devotion to this place had caked cloth and figure with the grime and neglect of many years. In his hand a chaotic and unstable lightsaber, the color of fresh blood, hummed and sparked in his hand. The very noise the saber gave sounded like one of pain and suffering in a long abyss of nothing. This 'wraith' seemed the polar opposite of the angel depicted on the tomb. From him, within this black knight, lay the bottomless pit of despair that consumed everything within this sepulcher dedicated to the very death of hope. All that remained of light, of good in this place lay from the tomb of the warrior empress which no darkness could ever assail.

The young hero experienced wave after wave of such raw power, then raw despair, then uncontrollable rage, and ever an unbearable sorrow that was at the center of this abyss. It was a cyclone of chaos and powerful emotions that had no anchor, left without a balance or order in the galaxy to control it. He didn't know what it was, what had happened to something as powerful and elemental, a sheer force of nature, which had become so corrupted by the darkness. But he knew that it was an obstacle, that whatever, whoever it might have been. It was no longer a being worthy of life. A feral and unfeeling animal that had boiled itself down to raw and torturous feelings that tore it apart. He switched on his blue saber, the brilliant crystal beam reflected in his dark green eyes, his jaw set in aggression. He was an imposing figure in that flash of a second, worthy to give the Wraith a moment of pause. Somewhere in its mind it was standing in a snowy forest of a destroyed weaponized planet of long ago.

The boy's Aunt Rose, the only mother figure he'd ever known, had a saying about fights. And that was "If you're in a fight with a Gundark, punch him in the mouth as hard as you can." Ever since he was a boy on her knee, getting his cut lip healed, his bruises tended too, it had been his fighting philosophy. He had always been audacious and aggressive, always wanting to get at the enemy first. But now it was as if his aggression had been super charged. The darkness had drained everything, even those who had unwisely trespassed on this hallow ground. But for the young fighter it had an opposite effect. He felt himself connected, bonded, to the Wraith in a way that neither opponent had expected. He felt himself deeply connected to the power source that the phantom was living off of. He felt his darkness, his anger, his very malice that was directed at the world for the hatred he had of himself. The black fire of his enemy made the swordsman amped up with white steam flaring from his nose and hyper aggression coiling his muscles like a spring.

Then, with great power, the youth unleashed the spring and leapt without fear at the dark figure that was taken aback by the sudden bond to this newcomer. Their blades clashed with teeth chattering vibration and squeals of energy. They broke apart, but the young man did not back down, coming at the phantasm again and again. In visions of split second foresight and reflexes that was seconds ahead of the fight, Crystal and crimson once again strove against one another. The battle moved in a blur of smooth and lightning fast strikes and blocks, their feet shuffling. They pushed and drove, danced and parried in a fury of angry humming and hissing. The dancing lights of the blades were caught in the ruined stain glass, the fight reflecting around the room a blinding cornucopia of droplets of lights. It was as if the Force itself cried tears of tragedy at the sight of these two fighting to death in fate's folly and destiny's cruel irony. Their two shadows, larger than life, had casted their dueling figures over the sacred tomb blotting the light from her in this blasphemy.

The youth matched the Wraith's savagery, using it against him in onslaught. But the hero's fear of losing the beautiful princess he was on a quest to save and his anger for the death of his uncle was no match for the sheer black rage and chaotic power that lived inside this helmeted phantom. It was with great desperate passion did he guard a dead empress's graveside like a dragon that lay atop a horde of treasure. She was a treasure of memories, flickered moments, and almost touches. His devotion to the protection and sanctity of those memories wrapped in a face, a figure carved in stone, was overwhelming as they battled against one another in a vicious contest of power against power. But slowly, then obviously, the wraith backed down the young intruder, pushing him backward, his straight forward nature, his endless suffering, fueling an inexhaustible stamina of rage.

They hacked and slashed, slamming away at one another in brute force. But, the hero could not rally, nor turn the tide. Soon they had reached a caved in abyss at the end of the burial chamber. Then, sensing his predicament, the youth planted his feet and would give no more ground to the helmeted wraith. He braced himself and absorbed the inhuman blow as the phantom, fueled by fear and shame, hit his saber against the youth's with the force of a sledge hammer. He nearly lost balance, falling below. But strangely, he felt someone catch him from behind. Their slender arms wrapped around his waist, steadily holding him in place with all the love and safety of a mother that held a small child learning to walk for the first time. From behind he felt himself immovable, as if his back was against a solid wall that could not be broken by anything. He did not look behind him, to see who this young woman was that was helping him, nor did he give much thought of it. He only gritted his teeth and pushed forward with all his might. Both blades of their sabers locked in a crackling and hissing impasse with the younger a step away from total blackness. Blue and red sparks flew, their mixture causing purple embers to float and scorch and irritate, eye, cheek and clothing. But neither one seemed to move. Both hero and Wraith looked deeply into one another's eyes as they pushed against each other. But, suddenly, something changed in the body language of the helmeted phantasm as they remained deadlocked.

There was something familiar about this, they both could sense it. Anger reseeding like the sea at low tide, the phantom spotted the Jacket on the youth. Then, it was the saber he carried, and finally the navigational key around his neck. One half worn by boy and the other by a girl, only together could they find the key to saving the Galaxy within their joined map. But above all of it, what he noticed the most was the eyes. The same eyes that had caused him to pause once before in a throne room, long ago. He knew those eyes, the face that was her spiting image, and the way both their teeth grinded in struggle and fierceness. In the handsome young hero's face, illuminated by red and blue light, he saw once more the fairy picture of a maiden that had haunted his very soul all these long torturous years. He knew, in that moment, what this handsome young hero was doing here, what he had come for …

And who he was.

Then, the helmeted figure that had fought with such savage strength, like he was a dark god of the underworld, a man who seemed to fight like he had been in the prime of his life, all to defend the very memories of his greatest failure, evaporated in an instant. Suddenly, in a blink, he had become old in front of the young Jedi Knight's very eyes. No longer was he a god, no longer a dark phantasm, what stood against the youth now was nothing but a tired and sad old man. The monster, the snake, was gone as was the fight inside him. Sensing that he had let his guard down, the hero struck out. With a grit of teeth, the Jedi pushed the wraith back on his heels. Then, with his blade lowered, the youth let fly a stomping kick square to his adversary's chest with the last reserves of the syphoned hate from a wraith that no longer existed. He sent the black clad man flying backwards. He didn't stop till he hit the cracked stone floor with an ugly crunch of vegetation. He slid through muck and leaves till he crashed back first into the foot of his beloved's tomb.

Something hidden on the side fell on top of the helmeted figure. Barely recovering, acting out of instinct, he reached for it. But he paused when the familiar hum of a familiar lightsaber was suddenly held to his chest. When he looked up, he saw that the youth was not yet willing to allow this sinking hole of endless darkness yield the fight. He didn't know what this creature was reaching for, but he didn't trust it.

"Don't try it!" He snarled.

But there was no defiance, taunt, or hatred in the figure that just looked up, seemingly haunted by the face that was in the glowing blue light.

"It's you, isn't it?" The helmeted figure asked … sorrow in his voice.

"Who?"

The helmeted thrall said nothing. His answer was in the action of taking the item he had been defending for so long and held it out to the young man. The young Knight stepped forward aggressively once more, ready to strike his enemy down in suspicion. But he halted, saber raised, when he saw that it was not some new weapon, some last desperation trick. In his hand was an ancient, leather bound, book with an ancient blue cover.

"It's for you … for her … for both of you." The old man offered.

"The Princess?" He asked upon instinct, feeling a gentle presence in his mind for just a shadows pass.

"Is that what she is?" There was something conflicted in his voice. "Is that … is that what she wanted?" He asked himself, lost in pictures of a throne room with his hand out and a choice of long ago. Then the helmeted figure suddenly became very quiet as if the words he spoke were not his own. He didn't finish his thoughts. It would not relieve the pain. His head bowed only in an old defeat at the very presence of that moment in time within his memories, of the greatest mistake he ever made.

Instead, he reached for his helmet, and with a hiss of unlocking the visor, he slid it from his head.

Long silver locks fell to his shoulders and a gray scraggly beard touched his chest. The eyes that had fallen on the young man were stained with years of an unbearable pain. It was a face that was filled with regret, sorrow, and longing hidden behind a fearsome mask that concealed a reign of terror that doomed a broken and cleaved soul that was no longer whole. And in his longing, in his guilt, and in his pain, a tomb, a girl, tormented him every moment the fallen champion had set his guard about her final resting place. The Wraith was a terrible, ruined, form of life whose very essence was a poisonous fume of evil memories that could never be atoned for without a savior to lift it from the darkness. But underneath that was nothing more than a broken and pathetic old man that had lost everything when she'd not take his hand and when he'd not go with her like she begged him too.

The Jedi frowned while his intense stare mapped and studied the broken and defeated figure that lay at his feet. In his heart he felt it again, the pull, the vague pictures of an incomplete scraps of a baby's memories. Like the woman entombed behind his foe, he knew this man's face. He'd seen this dark and tormented figure in the spaces between spaces, in the land, the realm where memories remain and dreams screen the past and the future. Inside where both light and dark reside in balance this figure lived in harmony with the light, the comfort of silence to collect oneself when the light did not improve one's mood or prospective. But it was more than just a metaphor. He was not the embodiment of that darkness of the galaxy. Instead, he was the embodiment of the darkness within the boy himself. Through his mind, through the waves of despair that lived in this pathetic old man, he saw that his suffering was connected to the girl that lay here. It was not the book in hand he was defending, it was her, the woman he loved. In penance for a great and foul deed that his refusal to follow her had wrought upon the star-crossed lovers. In the conflict and sorrow that swirled about this holy place, was but an extension of the hero's own soul. For all the raw material and emotions that soaked every inch of this place was used to craft, to conceive the very illumination in his own soul and that of an imprisoned princess. Their love and tragedy had made the very youth that came here to cast it all down.

He didn't say a word, and he didn't have too. As he extinguished his blade he felt a presence in his mind. He saw that the fallen old man knew that the boy knew now. He was not a parasite, a black creature from the abyss there to feast upon the succulent light of hope and beauty of the universe. He was once a great and powerful Emperor, a Supreme Leader, now he was a monk, a disgraced knight. His purpose, his punishment, his only remaining cause was to live his life in exile. He was to forever guard, in sorrow and regret, the tomb of the woman he loved. He wished that there was more that he could say to the hero that stood over him. But there was nothing left to say, there was nothing left to give to him. He had gotten everything he had ever wanted, and lost everything that he had truly needed. The only person who had loved him, the children she had borne to him in defiance of her friends, her family's wishes. And yet, for one who had tried to kill the past, it was him that let it rule over him, allowed it to drag him and the woman he loved back. It was his selfishness that had cost her, her life. She had died saving him, died believing he was more. But instead of honoring her final wishes he had succumbed to grief, to fear, and bitter hatred of himself, of his weakness. So he left behind their children, the purpose that she had given to him, and spent so many years guarding this place, this monument to his failure.

It was a tomb for two where they'd always be together and yet forever be parted.

The old man looked long upon the hero's face, regret, shame, and guilt were in the final tears that he had in him. He saw the boy's mother again, not a stone tomb, not the ethereal goddess that was projected in his dragon's horde. But a living and breathing reminder of her power and spirit that lived on. And his black and tormented heart lightened. For there was no dread in the destiny and doom that he felt come over him as he looked into the eyes of the boy. He knew that his fate had arrived, that a swift and cruel justice had come to collect a debt that he'd happily pay.

He slowly, with as much dignity as he could muster, found his feet. For one last time he had used the girl, the young woman he had loved so much, to pick himself up from his lowest place. He seemed frail and rickety now. Darkness and sorrow had burned away his strength in the years of isolation with only his misdeeds and longing to sustain him and his penance. But finally he found his feet and stood as straight as a board. The youth watched the taller man walked with purpose, without a wasted movement toward him. In his soiled and ruined gloved hands he held his lightsaber. The youth took a step back, ready for another round, but paused when instead the old man held the blade out to him in the palm of both his hands.

"Do what you were brought here for, Jedi." He said with an unwavering strength.

In an instant he knew what he wanted from him … and he shrank from it. Even with the residue of all the hatred and anger, the aggression that this dark spirit had filled him with in their connection, he could not find it in himself. What a father saw as a weakness not to do in the same situation, a son saw as strength in refusing to repeat history. He'd not strike down an unarmed man. He would not fulfill fate's irony by repeating a heinous murder, a great sin done by the very man asking to be punished for it.

In dismay, dark eyes watched as the youth took the book of Jedi Texts and placed it in his inner jacket pocket. Then, without a word, without so much as a blink, the youth turned his back on the old man. A great and terrible fear built within the jilted figure. A deep well of old emotions ran through him and the very fear of abandonment and lonesomeness of childhood returned so fiercely that he could not control himself.

"JACEN!"

The Jedi Knight suddenly froze at the coward's thunderous demand that was spoken in his own name. All the memories, of all the "could be" and "never were" of a family came to him. He knew deep within himself why the dark figure wished for this so badly. Then, he turned and looked into the eyes of the pathetic old man. There was just a moment of anger, of hatred of him. He could not do the deed, he could not kill himself, so he had waited, knowing that someday he would come and do it for him. He had convinced himself that it was his destiny as it was throughout their bloodline for sons to dethrone the evil of their fathers. So bitter was his hatred for this coward that for a flashpoint of a second he considered giving him what he wanted.

He thought of all the lonely nights hoping, and wishing for his touch, his assurances. All the times he was afraid and needed him, needed to be told that he was safe. All the things he never had in the years wondering why he didn't have parents when everyone else did around him. He came to hate him, hate her, and hate the very love that should never have been, that no one predicted. A love that ended the way it was always going to end, a love that created him, and left him abandoned with a rusting freighter, a blind Stormtrooper and his mechanic wife as his only comfort in a violent and dangerous galaxy. But most of all, he hated that the only thought this man had ever given to his only son at all, was to this very moment, when he'd come to kill him.

Jacen Solo gritted his teeth and shook his head at the impulse of the moment, the darkness that crept inside him that had once taken over the very man in front of him. But it was of no avail. He was the child of tormented lovers of great purpose, but he had been raised by a couple of mechanics, who worked all day in a simple trade … helping people. His Aunt and Uncle had taught him the virtues of a simple life, of an honesty of that type of living. It was not in him, and never would be, to do the thing that the old man wanted of him. Thus it was for fear, for love, and for the magic that the young woman behind the old man had blessed within her child, that he began to go back the way he had come.

It was admirable what he chose, what he wished to be. But in the end, he could not change what the Force had planned, nor the doom that had been placed on a young warlord when he made the choice that his son would not. There was no escape, no changing of destiny. He could no sooner change the designs of the Force than a Scavenger and Dark Lord could close off the bond that their violence had formed. All of it, their births, the great distance of who and where they came from, and their love was part of a greater plan. It was a plan that had led to this very moment.

The hairs on the back of Jacen Solo's neck stood up instantly. He saw it clear as day, seconds before it happened. In that beat of time, he did not think, did not weigh the morality of the action. He did not use his mind, his eyes, or his feelings, he acted on instinct. He was moving before he even heard the explosive crackle of a chaotic blade igniting. The charging footsteps toward him sounded like the wrathful thunder of an angry god, they were in pace with an executioner's drumming cadence. There was suddenly a brilliant and blinding flash of light that coincided with a second lightsaber powering on.

Then the old ruins grew deathly silent, not a gust of wind or twiddle of a planetary bird could be heard.

The great cornucopia of color and light dimmed slowly within the old temple. And when its great flare had burned out, a passing of clouds darkened the face of the setting twin suns. Then the only light that could be found was the glowing blue blade that was impaled through the old man's chest. The youth's eyes were wide in disbelief and shock as he looked on the burning embers and smoke that plumed from inside the old man's chest. But the phantasm did not look shocked nor was he angry. There was no resentment in the old man's eyes. Long had he known, foreseen this doom, and did not fight it. His whole face shook, his teeth chattering, refusing to scream or moan out in pain. He let it pass through him, let it absorb within, to relive the terrible sin he had done to his own father and feel every moment of the agony in punishment for such a great evil done that day.

Eyes glassy and dazed, the old man turned and looked to the hero, who was frozen in horror of what he had done. Then, slowly, he lifted his hand up and touched his face, the face of his own son. Then, for the first and last time in many years, he was human again. He was the boy's father.

 _(The Ring of Paul – Brian Tyler)_

When the blue saber was withdrawn back into its hilt, the boy caught the old man who, in his pain, was stiff as a board. Jacen dragged him back to the crypt, setting him down against it. The old man's eyes were all over the place, wheezing heavily, while his son patted out the embers and flames that were burning the old clothing at the entry wound. Then, he looked upon his father's face, the face of a dying man, and shock gave way to a fierce anger, a crippling sorrow of the ending to a beginning that never was. There were so many other things that he knew he should've been thinking about, to hold against the old man. But he had boiled it down to a childlike simplicity of loneliness, of having someone in the universe and having it all thrown away without care.

"Selfish bastard!" The boy roared.

He grabbed the guardian's tattered and weathered robes and balled them in his fists. He gave the dying man a violent shake of deep and painful emotion that had been penned up since the castle catacombs where he had found his dying Uncle Finn. He gritted his teeth, his chest heaving, and his look was of a helpless anger.

"WHY?!" His voice was an angry begging that left his throat in sobs of rage.

The old man's breath was shallow, his eyes glassy and dazed. "It was too late for me, son." He replied unafraid, the threshold of pain pushed to the limit.

"No … no, that's not true …" He shook his head defiantly against the contradiction that the old Knight was nodding in support of. "No one … no one is truly gone!" He argued, slamming him against the foot of the tomb in hatred of the man for what he had done, what he had made the boy do. The sentiment made the dying man's eyes lighten.

"You sound …" He wheezed. "Like your mother …" He gasped, just the mention of her name palpitated his body, hastening his demise. And it was that reminder, the look on their child's face, a spitting image of her, which lightened him considerably. "Jacen …" He reached out and grabbed the boy by the familiar jacket, balling it in his fist passionately. His emotions were overcome with a rush of affection and sorrow for a boy he had only known from afar. A presence he reached out through the lay lines of the universe to feel while the small boy was in slumber, joy, and contemplation of the far off horizons. He pulled the youth toward him till he was close.

"There are some things in this universe …" He shook his head. "Which cannot be undone …" He gasped. "Choices, evils, and tragedy which nothing … nothing can be done to change them." He breathed. He pulled the boy closer again, this time till their foreheads were touching. "You cannot save me. No one can, but myself … and that is no longer possible, not without … not without your …" He sputtered in his hesitation to name the balance to the missing part of his soul. He gasped with a shake of his head. "I've known a long time that this day would come. And saving me is not what you were brought here for." He shuttered in pain. The boy looked helpless, lost, and utterly alone at the words that his father spoke to him.

"But …" He shook his head. "Master Yoda, Luke …" He breathed in defeat. "They said that you'd help me!" He sounded defeated. For the first time Jacen had looked and sounded his age, he was a boy thrust upon with a great and noble quest that he hadn't asked for. A once carefree youth chosen to face dangers he never knew existed to save a beautiful young girl he had never seen, whose voice called out to him in his mind while he slept. And through it all, there was not a person who was left that could help him.

"Then …" The bearded figure released him. "Let me help you …" He shuttered painfully. Jacen watched as the old man slowly began to remove his ragged and torn leather gloves. they revealed pale and scarred hands which shook in deep pain. Then, suddenly, desperately, he clasped the boy by the back of the neck and forced him forward. He looked into his eyes and shuttered a breath in emotions of regret, allowing the walls that guarded his heart to fall, tears suddenly welling despite the ragged determination of his cause.

"Let the past die …" He nodded with a hard swallow of a shaky breath. "Don't, don't look back." He shook his head. "Don't look back for me, for your mother … for this place." He said with painful emotion. "Don't let the wrongs we've done you, that I've done, imprison you, as it had me. A man trapped by his own prophecies," He said. "Don't think of us in anger, or hate, or in longing … find a place that is your own, in here …" His hand clasped the leather over his son's heart. "And don't give into the pain of the past. Don't linger on the bitterness of the 'could be' or 'never was'." His voice broke for a moment. "Find the balance, the peace of the order, and the wonder of the chaos, and don't look back." He nodded. He pulled the boy closer again, the light fading in his eyes.

"Do what I could not, Jacen …" He breathed shallowly. "Save the girl." There was never a more serious look in his eyes. "Save her, love her, and together you'll not need any of this, you'll not suffer the fate I have, that your mother has." Tears fell freely. "The both of you are all each other have left now … all of me, of your mother that will be left in the universe. Save her …" He finished with a hard nod.

For a flourish of a spark they paused staring at one another. A flash of all that should have been of a family, of a life, which they had both wanted, had come into their mind. They saw a future that never was, in which this same conversation could've been had in the peace of a home, with a young mother of twins upon his lap. Her eyes piercing and filled with love as she listened and watched father and son talk of such important things into the night in safety and in affection. All the mistakes of a past treated as lessons to a set of twins who had healed a Supreme Leader's hate by a love for such a suffering creature which had been inherent from their conception. But it was a future that could never be, a utopia sacked and lain waste by an impassible hatred and anger. It was all they had both ever wanted, but they could not control the future or the doom that so much pain and fear had placed upon the dying man.

Then, suddenly, the guardian used what strength he had left and pushed the boy away from him. The young Jedi Knight collapsed backward on the floor. The look he gave his father was of shock and confusion.

"Go!" He said with gritted teeth of pain. "There's no time!" He gasped in desperation.

"I can't leave you …"

The saddest of smirks touched the old man's face. "Are you still a good Jedi, Jacen?" He asked in a moment of serenity and measured control.

"Yes …" The boy shut his eyes in conflict.

The guardian nodded. "Then, you will allow a dying old man to find his peace in the force, on his own terms." He asked with a shaky sorrow, his eyes never straying from his son. He was no longer the monster, the wraith, the phantasm, just a tired old man with one last request of a son, a good son. The youth looked to be torn apart by the simple request.

"I died a long time ago, with your mother." There was a solemn truth to his dark quieted voice. "This was where we were buried, and this is where I will remain." He closed his eyes in a different kind of pain.

The boy got to his feet, and for a moment he thought of defiance, of challenging him. But he couldn't find the words, crippled by emotions that swirled in him and around this holy place forgotten to the Galaxy and time. He had felt the darkness, the regret, fear, anger, and shame of his father's soul upon their contact. But he also felt more than the terror of darkness with no balance. He had also felt the attachment, the great pain, and longing for just a taste of the residual light that emulated from his mother's tomb. Then, he realized, with much heart break, that it was not by her shining being, her power that it endured. It was by his father's own sheer love, by her residual mark left upon him that maintained the pocket of good and warmth in this dark place of sorrow. As long as his father existed, walked the Galaxy, there would always be an unassailable purity to her worldly items, blessed by a deathless love for a monster that she only ever saw as a fellow frightened child who had been left alone for so long.

Slowly, he backed away from the sight of the slumped man that sat dying against a sacred altar that he condemned himself to guard for eternity. It was where he belonged, it was where he had lived, and it was where he had died. It was not only by his choice that he would remain, but that of many other powers in the universe that moved and shaped the balance of chaos and order. Slowly, Jacen turned and began walking away. He tried not to look back at the scraggly old man, aged prematurely by sorrow and unchecked darkness.

"I'll be seeing you around, kid …" He whispered with a small smile of mirth and affection at an old memory.

For a long time, seemingly an eternity, did he sit alone watching the entrance of the temple. Around him the shadows and darkness flooded through the burial chamber, dimming his vision slowly. A deep quiet had settled over the ruins and ivy wrapped stone of the forgotten place. Lightened eyes watched the stillness of the fallen leaves on the floor, the strange patterns that shadows made from cracked and broken stain glass, things that he had seemingly never noticed, even when he had been the one that commissioned this palace of mourning and hopelessness to be built. But now, unburdened by his worldly troubles, his dark regret, he greeted a world of strange wonder he once used to know as an old friend.

Once more, he felt a boy again. His heart lightened, his vision clear, and yet undoubtedly alone. So many great and marvelous things had his powers, his vision, seen and wrought that he had not shared with others. Things that now would never be remembered, that would never be conceived in the mind of others. They were many a sight, sound, brilliant thrill, and texture of touch, things that a boy had hoarded unto himself rather than share. His days spent counting them in spite of the many wrongs that others had done to him. He saw his peers, his parents, his family, not worthy of knowing, of seeing, of sharing in these treasures of knowledge that he had once been shown so freely by the powers of the universe. Now they were all lost, beyond saving, beyond reckoning, never to be captured or to be enjoyed even by his children. At the end of his life, the old man, felt the cold steel of great regret and guilt tear him asunder once again.

Loneliness had been his chosen companion, and forever would it be at his side, even onto death.

"How goes the day, Ben?"

"I've seen better …"

Slowly, the sorrowful and regretful dying man looked up from where he sat lifelessly against the tomb. His eyes seemed hazy in their death throes, his sight darkening into the long night. But it was not so hard to see the figure that stood before him. Their hue and raiment carried a soft blue glow that highlighted their frame. After all these years, so many parted and tormented by history, he did not flinch, marvel, or worship the sight that stood before him. He simply stared, convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was unworthy of the sight as his part in this story ended.

She was not the saintly figure that he had carved to perfection on the stone slab of her tomb. She was as she had always been. There was no Empress's dress, no crown upon her brow, or long luxurious locks flowing. The perfectly athletic girl still had a large forehead, her fine nut brown hair was in a top bun, the rest spilling messily down her pale neck. Her supple skin, scraped sinfully smooth by a childhood in sand, had scars and blemishes. She still wore her blue, silver, and black robes that she had made especially for their first meeting as allies and lovers on "The Supremacy" many long years ago. She was still young, beautiful, and filled with a light that could not be extinguished.

But rather than return it. Rather than enthrall himself to a face, a figure, that he had not seen for so long, the man just lowered his head to his chest. Her lovely young face watched the tired old man with the saddest smirks of pained sympathy, her head cocked to the side as she stood over him. It wasn't that he didn't believe she was there, it was simply that he did not feel worthy of basking in her ethereal presence. Her spectral eyes looked glassy, opening her mouth to speak, holding a hand out to go to him, to touch him. But she withheld her comfort, knowing him better than anyone alive or even dead. Instead, she held him in her gaze with a deep and endless love of a great compassion. No one was harder on the man than himself when he had perceived to have wronged someone, especially when he felt he had failed her, the woman he loved.

Copper colored suede boots left no tread or disturbance on the floor filled with rotted leaves of many long passed planetary autumns. She walked past the drooping figure slumped at the foot of the tomb. Her eyes not flinching, though terribly sad did they behold the fallen hero. But instead of going to him, she instead strode soundlessly to the head of the tomb. There she looked down at the carved figure that was supposed to have been her. For a long time she studied it, a small smirk touching her lips. Not for the first time, but with long drought, did she look upon herself through the eyes of the man who had loved her long before either one had been born. Her fingers traced the hairline with amusement.

"She doesn't look like me at all …" She said with a frown of some offense to what she studied. There was a long pause from the slumped figure that had not moved for a long time. She looked frightened, even in her current form, filled with sudden doubt.

"Of course she doesn't …" A condescending voice finally answered her from the ground. "Do you think I want to spend all of eternity with that twelve-inch forehead, predator's teeth, and constantly sweating complexion?" The voice echoed with haughty dismissal that was peer bite. The girl gave a toothy grin despite the look of insult that came over her face.

"Well your big nose and pasty skin isn't exactly getting carved into likeness anywhere I last checked." She countered.

"It's a lucky break that we ended up having two of the most beautiful children in the Galaxy …" The man gasped. "Between your forehead and my nose, we could've done some serious damage with a brood of little Toydarian nightmares." He teased gently. The humorous noise he made was mixed with a groan of pain from his mortal wound. The biggest of sad toothy grins came over her beautiful face as she whimsically gazed over the tomb, the hallow altar of this palace of sorrow.

Though ever a look of positivity, the optimism of light ever in her being, her face gave way to sorrow the longer she looked upon her likeness, her own tomb. Her delicate fingers that knew such hardship all of her life, traced her own face. From just a touch could she feel all the sadness, regret, and shame that had been heaped and prayed upon the crypt in the center of this cathedral dedicated to one man's guilt. She felt but just a taste of what her passing; her disappearance from the universe had done to one who had loved her above all else.

"I'm not in here …" She said softly.

"I know." A quiet voice confirmed stoically.

It was then that the young woman slowly turned back to the figure of the bearded hermit that was obscured. Her eyes grew glassy. He didn't need to say more, and neither did she. When she had died, her body, her spirit, had disappeared, became one with the Force. Nothing had been left in her wake. All that was left was her phantom weight and the feeling of the emptiness in her lover's arms where she had once been. It was now so clear to her what this place was, what it truly was.

It was a prison.

The Supreme Leader, the most powerful man in the Galaxy, had felt the only person in the universe he loved die in his arms. He had won a great victory, the whole of the Galaxy to fall into a thousand year darkness, ruled by a god like being. But instead, he destroyed his Empire, had forsaken his power, and for the price of peace he built this sepulcher in the obscurity on the edges of the unknown. And there, with the carving of the woman he failed, he locked himself away forever. And for many long years he stayed there, till the Galaxy, till time, had forgotten him. Every day he sat by the girl's image and repented, grieved, and waited for his destiny, for his prophesized doom, to find him. His only purpose was to mourn the many mistakes he had made and betrayals of trust and love that his hate had engineered, till the day that his fate came to this overgrown temple. Then he'd give aide in one last act of redemption before he allowed his penance to end, for his doom to take him for all his crimes. Chief amongst them, not taking a young girl's offered hand of love in a throne room.

For so long, for so much pain and haunted darkness of dreams of happiness never known, he had sat in this tomb, not hers, but his. He was a man that had spent so long waiting to die, holding onto life, to torment himself for all the terror and fear that had consumed him and her. Even now she saw that he was still holding on to life, still ashamed, still burdened by unworthiness of the love of a scavenger that so willingly opened her heart to him. She who had gave her life up for someone so unworthy of such a sacred gift. A single tear of blue light fell down her cheek as she stood next to the drooping body of the silver bearded man that watched his thighs in depression as the last of his life drained away.

 _(Reunited – Trevor Jones)_

He did not flinch, did not speak. He was too weakened to do anything when the girl gently slid down to sit against her own tomb. Her eyes were sad, her lovely face pained as she sidled up next to him. She watched this broken and pathetic old man who had never done a thing right in his entire life. Yet, her eyes shined as if he was still the virile young man, the man who saved her from a great evil in his throne room. She looked at him as if he was still the young man she was so convinced that would help her save the Galaxy. He was still the lost soul that could be turned by the sheer power of her love for him.

After all these long years she still saw this tired old man as her hero.

Softly she wrapped her arms around the weakened figure and pulled him straight. The gaze he gave the girl was half blinded and squinting, but he could still see her perfectly, even when the rest of the world was as pitch dark and empty as space. Her hand gently traced his hairy cheek in longing, in pain for all the misery, all the sorrows that he hung around his cleaved soul. No matter what he had done, what evils he thought he had committed, she could never wish this life, this hurt, upon this man out of any. His eyes fluttered closed at the soft, angelic touch, when she stroked his cheek gently with love in her heart. He coughed weakly before turning into a touch he hadn't felt in so long.

"I waited as long as I could …" He whispered. "I'm sorry." He shook his head. "I, I had to wait for Jacen." He explained. "I had to help him, help our boy … help him save our little girl." His voice sputtered in pain, the girl wincing in sympathy and agony for the man in her arms.

The young woman nodded quietly. "I know …" She said with a gentle sob. While he was tormented and languished in this dark place, year melting to year, the girl had waited. She had waited so long for him. Even now, even so many tragedies and wars later, she was still the headstrong girl in the escape capsule, waiting for him to come find her in the hanger bay. She was told that she couldn't linger, that she was to move on, to let go, but she couldn't. It didn't matter how long or how much energy it would take. She'd wait forever for the missing part of her soul to return to her side.

With a shaking hand the old man reached out when they heard the familiar hum of the converters of the Millennium Falcon beginning to fire up in the distance. He reached for the sound of his father's ship, for his lover's ship, and now for his son's ship. He spent so much time hating that piece of garbage. Never did he realize till the end that it had carried to him the people that had loved him most. They were people that, in his pride and hate, he had rejected. Gently, the glowing hand of the young girl took his wandering one in hers and slowly folded him into her arms. Laying him down across her lap, and cradling his head against her breast. A droplet of light fell from her eye and splattered on his cheek like a raindrop of starlight.

"Tell me …" The old man whispered. "Tell me that he saves her?" He asked as the engines of the Falcon grew louder over the serene quiet. The girl, threading her hand through his long and unkempt curls, looked back to the broken and brittle stain glass windows high above them. After a long moment she turned back to him with a teary smile of loving optimism.

"Of course he will …" She nodded, her voice filled with a maternal pride, as she stroked the old man's hair affectionately. Then, quietly she leaned down close to him. "They'll save each other. And in time …" She whispered. "The Galaxy." Her grin was wide and toothy, filled with confidence and comfort at the might of beauty and strength that their love had created in twin souls. For the first time in an unfathomable amount of years of his long life, a smile of comfort and contentment came over the old man's face.

"Good …" He swallowed weakly. His eyes arrested by the sight of the girl's face, the last of life fading from him.

In the distance the sound of the thrusters of an ancient, white, YT Corellian Freighter came alive as the ship began take off procedures. Blue light of the main engines cast rays of light over the evening shadows of the quiet forest planet. Its reflection bathed the burial chamber in a brand new glow as it slowly rose into the air near the broken windows. A brilliant strobe covered every inch till there was no darkness or shadow left in the room. There was a great concentration of light that caused the old man to gasp in a childlike wonder as the corporeal specter that held him was suddenly enraptured in an ethereal glow that pierced even the eyes of death.

"Let's go home, Ben …"

Then, reverently, Rey leaned down and captured the lips of Ben Solo.

As the last synapsis of memories, personality, and knowledge passed mind, body, and soul, a blinding flare of multicolored light encapsulated the doomed lovers as they kissed. Like the charging noble steed of a valiant knight, the setting twin suns reflected off the hull of the Millennium Falcon as it charged forth onto the horizon. But when the ships lights faded within the tomb the two lovers had disappeared from all sight and knowledge. No one knew where they had gone, or where they might be found. It was even possible that they no longer were in this plain of existence. All that was known, that was sure of, was simply this … where ever they were, they were by the other's side.

Always together, forever apart …

Now reunited.


End file.
